He sees it as “unacceptable” that a deviation in their functions is attributed to prosecutors in a “gratuitous and unfounded manner”
MADRID, 23 Nov. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The six members of the Association of Prosecutors (AF) in the Fiscal Council have once again requested the State Attorney General, Álvaro García Ortiz, to convene an extraordinary plenary session to approve an institutional declaration on the amnesty, to which they have added a new petition for the next ordinary meeting to debate the protection requested by the ‘procés’ prosecutors in the face of ‘lawfare’ accusations.
In a writing, to which Europa Press has had access, the six signatories insist that an extraordinary plenary session be set “for debate and approval of an institutional declaration on the proposed organic amnesty law for institutional, political and social normalization in Catalonia “. According to the tax sources consulted, the end of December is being considered.
Furthermore, they request that “an item be incorporated into the next ordinary plenary session on the agenda that aims to approve the express protection, recognition and support of the Fiscal Council for the actions of the members of the Prosecutor’s Office in all procedures linked or derived from the so-called ‘procés’, carried out without exception in accordance with current legislation and without any deviation being allowed for political motivation.”
In this regard, they point out that, “on the occasion of the publication of the agreement signed between the PSOE and Junts (…), the adaptation to the constitutional principles of the prosecutors who have intervened and still continue to intervene in the cases has been called into question. judicial processes affected by such proposition”.
They thus refer to the part of the agreement that talks about creating parliamentary investigation commissions to detect possible cases of ‘lawfare’ and clarify the corresponding responsibilities, which opens the door to sanctioning the judges and prosecutors who prosecuted the ‘procés’.
As a result of the PSOE-Junts agreement, the prosecutors of the ‘procés’ – Javier Zaragoza, Consuelo Madrigal, Fidel Cadena and Jaime Moreno – sent a letter to García Ortiz asking for “institutional protection”, although the head of the Public Ministry limited himself to answer them that he would “always” defend the “autonomy” of these and other prosecutors.
In response, 18 prosecutors from the Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court addressed their own letter to García Ortiz, reproaching him for having “deliberately ignored” the request of his four colleagues “in the face of the unjustified attacks to which they are being subjected.”
The six members of the AF say that the proof that the actions of the prosecutors have been questioned “was the situation experienced on November 16, 2023 in the Justice Commission of the Parliament of Catalonia by the lieutenant prosecutor of Catalonia, Pedro Ariche, to whom Joaquim Jubert, from the political party Junts, addressed him, publicly accusing him of violating the presumption of innocence in his professional activity.”
“The questioning of the subjection to the constitutional principles of legality and impartiality of prosecutors extends throughout the entire prosecutorial career, from the prosecutors of the Supreme Court who intervened in the proceedings held before the Second Chamber, passing through the prosecutor’s offices before the Constitutional Court, the National Court or the Court of Accounts and reaching all the prosecutor’s offices in Catalonia,” they say.
“And, of course, it reaches the State Attorney General’s Office (FGE) itself, which has been aware of, supervised and agreed on each action carried out in these procedures, thereby guaranteeing the principle of unity of action,” they added.
In his opinion, “it is unacceptable that these prosecutors be gratuitously and unfoundedly attributed a deviation from the exercise of the functions that are ours as members of the Judiciary in order to serve an alleged purpose of judicializing politics.”